In Detroit Bankruptcy, It's the Poor Who Lose

Bymobanmarket November 18, 2020

:

Ingham County Circuit Judge Rosemarie Aquilina ruled Friday afternoon that Detroit’s bankruptcy filing is “unconstitutional” and must be withdrawn.

The ruling, came after lawyers representing the city’s pension funds won an emergency hearing to block the bankruptcy filing.

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette said the state will now request a hearing with the Michigan Court of Appeals.

:

The Detroit emergency manager’s filing of city bankruptcy Thursday sparked fears that the impoverished municipality is set to go barreling towards more privatization measures that will further devastate the city’s poor.

Click Here: cheap all stars rugby jersey

In the largest Chapter 9 bankruptcy case in US history, the move will allow the city to decimate benefits and pensions for city workers and retirees—the city’s ‘unsecured’ lenders— while gutting public services and diverting public dollars to pay off the big banks who own much of the city’s debt.

SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT

Unions charge that emergency manager Kevyn Orr—with the support of Michigan Governor Rick Snyder—rushed into bankruptcy to subvert democratic process and avoid the Michigan constitutional mandate requiring municipal governments to keep their word on pension contracts with retirees. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees president Lee Saunders declared in a statement released immediately after the decision:

Orr—appointed by Governor Rick Snyder last March—has already been blasted for advancing a Republican-led state takeover of city government and pushing a corporate agenda of privatization that further devastates Detroit’s poor and disenfrachises the city’s majority African-American voters.

The New Yorker reports that Michigan voters signaled their disapproval of bankruptcy filings for Detroit:

The unelected manager, who is a former corporate bankruptcy lawyer, wielded his near absolute ’emergency’ powers since taking up his position to push forward plans to cut off poor neighborhoods from essential services and privatize transportation, streetlights, and even garbage pickup throughout the city. Nothing has been safe from his plan for rapid privatization: he was even considering selling off the city’s esteemed art museum.

Nearly 60 percent of Detroit children live in poverty and 33 percent of all land sits vacant in a city where more than 80 percent of all residents are black. Half of all streetlights are non-functional, and a majority of public parks have shut down.

_____________________

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Leave a Reply Cancel reply